Businesses must often face redundancy issues. For example, in the context of a merger, a first enterprise with many software applications may merge with a second enterprise with many software applications to create a resulting enterprise with many software applications. The resulting enterprise may save much of the time and effort required to develop and maintain applications by eliminating applications for one enterprise that are duplicative of applications for the other enterprise. As another example, in the context of streamlining business operations, an enterprise may save much of the time and effort required to develop and maintain applications by combining entities or groups within the enterprise and eliminating applications for one entity that are duplicative of applications for another entity.
However, when enterprises are merged or when entities within an enterprise are combined, the elimination of duplicative applications does not necessarily result in any savings. For example, the process of determining which applications to eliminate (particularly for merging enterprises having thousands of applications) may prove to be so time-consuming and costly that even with cost reductions from elimination of duplicative applications, the overall result is a loss. Because the adopted applications may be from different enterprises, additional costs may arise from creating new interfaces between such applications.
Furthermore, application users for each enterprise may prefer to retain the applications with which they are already familiar. Such preferences make objective decisions difficult regarding which of the hundreds to even thousands of applications are the best choices to be eliminated. Additionally, a process that often results in unexpected losses instead of savings is the prioritizing of schedules for when applications will be eliminated.